Thanks to those of you who sent me this HBR article: Doctors Feel Excluded from Health Care Value Efforts Long story short… brought to you by Bain consultants: Doctors don’t like being excluded and organizational satisfaction goes up when you…
In the past year or two, it seems like I have heard more about people and organizations leading Lean study trips to Japan. This has gone on for decades, but there seems to be a resurgence. I first partnered with…
it's great to see an 11 year old thinking like an engineer and an entrepreneur. He's the son of a Toyota "operational excellence" consultant. For those who try to unfortunately equate Lean to a "clean desk policy," the father's desk is a great argument against banning family photos and an illustration of why Lean isn't about putting tape around everything...
The Lean Enterprise Institute (a former employer of mine from 2009 to 2011) has announced a new CEO, the third in their history following founder James P. Womack and his successor, John Shook.
Their press release:
Lean Enterprise Institute Names Eric Buehrens New CEO
The start of the release:
"The nonprofit Lean Enterprise Institute, a global leader in lean thinking and practice, today announced the appointment of Eric Buehrens as its new CEO. The appointment took effect October 1, 2017.
A proven lean thinker and leader, Buehrens led lean transformations at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where he served as COO and Interim CEO, and at Reliant Medical Group, a Massachusetts group medical practice, where he was COO."
TL;DR: A 1966 magazine exposé documented widespread, preventable patient harm caused by system failures in American hospitals. While some areas have improved, many of the same problems–errors, infections, lack of transparency, and blame instead of learning–still persist today. Three or…
I hope you’ll join me to view a KaiNexus webinar that I’m hosted today. The topic is near and dear to my heart (as well as to others at KaiNexus): collaboration, learning, sharing. Effective Collaboration Across Organizations and Industries Our…
I saw this headline the other day about University Medical Center in Lubbock, Texas: “UMC finds savings through waste“ The headline really should say “through waste reduction.” Reducing waste is, of course, a good thing. Reducing waste usually saves money…
If this post is a bit of a rant, I apologize. The problems here are avoidable and fixable. That’s one reason I get so fired up about patient safety. Patient harm is not an unavoidable natural disaster, like a hurricane.…
Joining me again for Episode #288 is Dean Gruner, MD, the recently retired CEO of ThedaCare, a health system in Wisconsin that has long been considered a worldwide leader in the practice of Lean in healthcare.
Recently, in Episode #286, Dean shared his reflections on his work and ThedaCare's "Lean journey." Today, the topic is Accountable Care Organizations and other bigger-picture healthcare reform topics.
Dean was also previously my guest in Episodes 119 and 144.
I'm including a full transcript along with a three-page PDF summary, as I've been doing recently.
I posted an article on LinkedIn last week as a companion article and summary of my podcast with Dean Gruner, MD, the recently retired CEO of ThedaCare.
That article:
"A Retired Hospital CEO Shares the Employee Feedback That was 'A Bucket of Cold Water to the Face.'"
There have been over 125 comments so far... but one has me scratching my head.
It read:
"I looked at deploying Lean within our PNO, and ultimately decided against it, in part for two reasons:
because Lean is about doing the same thing, albeit better and
it is not as much customer/outwardly focused as we need in healthcare."
Lean is not customer/outwardly focused? I hope this isn't a widespread perception or belief out there. I hope I'm overreacting to something that's not really a problem... but I wrote the post anyway.
Just a quick announcement here. If you’re a regular blog reader, you might know about the “ExperienceChange” change management simulation and workshop that I facilitate. See my past blog posts about this workshop and the valuable lessons learned. I normally…
As Eric wrote about in The Lean Startup (and as many others say), time is the most precious commodity anybody has. I think that's true in startups and it's true in other organizations. Everybody says they don't have enough time. So, we have to use it wisely.
